Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., May 21-October 16, 1839, part 1

Who that had seen us stirring our fires that night in the starlight of bright skies among the mountain forests; who that had seen the buffalo ribs propped up before the crackling blaze – the brisket boiling in our camp-kettles; who that had seen us with open countenances yield to these well cooked invitations to "drive dull care away," will not believe that we accepted them, and swallowed against time, and hunger, and tole? Indeed, we ate that night till there was a reasonable presumption that we had eaten enough; and when we had spent a half-hour in this agreeable employment, that presumption was supported by a pile of bones, which if put together by Buffon in his best style, would have supported not only that but another presumption to the like effect. Our hearty old Kentuckian was at home, and we were his guests. He sat at the head of his own board, and claimed to dictate the number of courses with which we should be served. "No, no," said he, as we strode away from the bare ribs which lay round us, to our couches of pine leaves, "no, no, I have eaten with you, fared well, and now you must take courage while you eat with me; no, no, not done yet; mighty good eating to come. Take a rest upon it, if you like, while I cook another turn; but I'll insure you to eat till day peeps. Our meat here in the mountains never pains one. Nothing harms here but pills and lead; many's the time that I have starved six and eight days, and when I have found meat, ate all night; that's the custom of the country. We never borrow trouble from hunger or thirst, and when we have a plenty, we eat the best pieces first, for fear of being killed by some brat of an Indian before we have enjoyed them. You may eat as much as you can; my word for it, this wild meat never hurts one. But your chickens and bacon, &c., in the settlements, it came right near shoving me into the Kenyon when I was down there last."

While the excellent man was giving vent to these kind feelings, he was busy making preparations for another course. The marrow bones were undergoing a severe flagellation; the blows of the old hunter's hatchet were cracking them in pieces, and laying bare the rolls of "trapper's butter" within them. A pound of marrow was thus extracted, and put into a gallon of water heated nearly to the boiling point. The blood which he had dipped from the cavity of the buffalo was then stirred in till the mass became of the consistency of rice soup. A little salt and black pepper finished the preparation. It was a fine dish; too rich, perhaps, for some of my esteemed acquaintances, whose digestive organs partake of the general laziness of their habits; but to us who had so long desired a healthful portion of bodily exercise in that quarter, it was the very marrow and life-blood of whatsoever is good and wholesome for famished carnivorous animals like ourselves. It was excellent, most excellent. It was better than our father's foaming ale. For while it loosed our tongues and warmed our hearts towards one another, it had the additional effect of Aaron's oil; it made our faces to shine with grease and gladness. But the remembrance of the palate pleasures of the next course, will not allow me to dwell longer upon this. The crowning gratification was yet in store for us.

While enjoying the soup, which I have just described, we believed the bumper of our pleasures to be sparkling to the brim; and if our excellent old trapper had not been there, we never should have desired more. But how true is that philosophy which teaches, that to be capable of happiness, we must be conscious of wants! Our friend Kelly was in this a practical as well as theoretical Epicurean. "No giving up the beaver so," said he; "another bait and we will sleep."

Saying this, he seized the intestines of the buffalo, which had been properly cleaned for the purpose, turned them inside out, and as he proceeded stuffed them with strips of well salted and peppered tender loin. Our "boudies" thus made, were stuck upon sticks before the fire, and roasted till they were thoroughly cooked and brown. The sticks were then taken from their roasting position and stuck in position for eating; that is to say, each of us with as fine an appetite as ever blessed a New England boy at his grandsire's Thanksgiving dinner, seized a stick pit, stuck it in the earth near our couches, and sitting upon our haunches, ate our last course – the desert of a mountain host's entertainment. These wilderness sausages would have gratified the appetite of those who had been deprived of meat a less time than we had been. The envelopes preserve the juices with which while cooking, the adhering fat, turned within, mingles and forms a gravy of the finest flavour. Such is a feast in the mountains.

Since leaving Fort William we had been occasionally crossing the trails of the Eutaw war parties, and had felt some solicitude for the safety of our little band. An overwhelming number of them might fall upon us at night and annihilate us at a blow. But we had thus far selected such encampments, and had such confidence in our rifles and in our dog, who never failed to give us notice of the least movement of a wolf or panther at night, that we had not stationed a guard since leaving that post.

Our guide too sanctioned this course; always saying when the subject was introduced that the dawn of day was the time for Indian attacks, and that they would rise early to find his eyes shut after the howl of the wolf on the hills had announced the approach of light. We however took the precaution to encamp at night in a deep woody glen, which concealed the light of our fire, and slept with our equipments upon us, and our well primed rifles across our breasts.

On the morning of the 21st we were awakened at sunrise, by our servant who had thus early been in search of our animals. The sun rose over the eastern mountains brilliantly, and gave promise of a fine day. Our route lay among vast swelling hills, the sides of which were covered with groves of the large yellow pine and aspen. These latter trees exclude every other from their society. They stand so closely that not the half of their number live until they are five inches in diameter. Those also that grow on the borders of the groves are generally destroyed, being deprived of their bark seven or eight feet up, by the elk which resort to them yearly to rub off the annual growth of their horns. The snow on the tops of the hills was melting, and along the lower edge of it, where the grass was green and tender, herds of buffalo were grazing. So far distant were they from the vales through which we travelled, that they appeared a vast collection of dark specks on the line of the sky.

By the side of the pebbly brooks, grew many beautiful plants. A species of convolvulus and honeysuckle, two species of wild hops and the mountain flax, were among them. Fruits were also beginning to appear; as wild plums, currants, yellow and black; the latter like those of the same colour in the gardens, the former larger than either the red or black, but of an unpleasant astringent flavour. – We had not, since entering the mountains, seen any indication of volcanic action. The rocky strata and the soil appeared to be of primary formation. We made fifteen miles to-day in a general course of north by west.

On the 22nd we travelled eight miles through a country similar to that we had passed the day before. We were still on the waters of the Platte; but seldom in sight of the main stream. Numerous noisy brooks ran among the hills over which we rode. During the early part of the morning buffalo bulls were often seen crossing our path: they were however so poor and undesirable, that we shot none of them. About ten o'clock we came upon a fresh trail, distinctly marked by hoofs and dragging lodge poles. Kelly judged these "signs" to be not more than twenty four hours old, and to have been made by a party of Eutaws which had passed into Boyou Salade to hunt the buffalo. Hostile Indians in our immediate neighbourhood was by no means an agreeable circumstance to us. We could not contend with any hope of success against one hundred and fifty tomahawks and an equal number of muskets and bows and arrows. They would also frighten the buffalo back to the bull pen, and thus prevent us from laying in a stock of meat farther along to support us across the desert in advance. We therefore determined to kill the next bull that we should meet, cure the best pieces for packing, and thus prepare ourselves for a siege or a retreat, as circumstances might dictate; or if the Indians should prevent our obtaining other and better meat, and yet not interrupt us by any hostile demonstration in pursuing our journey, we might, by an economical use of what we could pack from this point, be able to reach, before we should perish with hunger, the game which we hoped to find on tributaries of Grand River.

We, therefore, moved on with great caution; and at about two o'clock killed a fine young bull. He fell in a glen through which a little brook murmured along to a copse just below. The bulls in considerable number were manifesting their surplus wrath on the other side of the little wood with as much apparent complacency as certain animals with fewer legs and horns often do, when there is not likely to be any thing in particular to oppose them. But fortunately for the reputation of their pretensions, as sometimes happens to their biped brethren, a circumstance chanced to occur, when their courage seemed waxing to the bursting state, on which it could expend its energies. The blood of their slaughtered companions scented the breeze, and on they came, twenty or more, tail in air, to take proper vengeance.

We dropped our butcher knives, mounted quickly, and were about to accommodate them with the contents of our rifles, when, like many perpendicular bellowers, as certain danger comes, they fled as bravely as they had approached. Away they racked, for buffalo never trot, over the brown barren hills in the north-east, looking neither to the right nor left, for the long hair around the head does not permit such aberrations of their optics; but onward gloriously did they roll their massive bulks – now sinking in the vales and now blowing up the ascents; stopping not an instant in their career until they looked like creeping insects on the brow of the distant mountain. Having thus vanquished, by the most consummate generalship and a stern patriotism in the ranks never surpassed by Jew or Gentile, these "abandoned rebels," we butchered our meat, and as one of the works of returning peace, loaded it upon our animals, and travelled in search of quaking-asp wood wherewithal to dry it. The traders and trappers always prefer this wood for such purposes, because, when dry, it is more inodorous than any other; and consequently does not so sensibly change the flavour of the meat dried over a fire made of it. Half an hour's ride brought us to a grove of this timber, where we encamped for the night – dried our meat, and Eutaws near or far, slept soundly. In this remark I should except, perhaps, the largest piece of human nature among us, who had, as his custom was, curled down hard-by our brave old guide and slept at intervals, only an eye at a time, for fear of Indians.

23rd. Eighteen miles to-day among rough precipices, overhanging crags, and roaring torrents. There were, however, between the declivities and among the copses of cotton-wood, quaking-asp and fir, and yellow pine, some open glades and beautiful valleys of green verdure, watered by the rivulets gushing from the stony hills, and sparkling with beautiful flowers. Five or six miles from our last encampment, we came upon the brow of a woody hill that overlooked the valley, where the waters on which we were travelling unite with others that come down from the mountains in the north, and from what is properly called the south fork of the Great Platte, within the mountains. Here we found fresh Indian tracks; and on that account deemed it prudent to take to the timbered heights, bordering the valley on the west, in order to ascertain the position of the Indians, their numbers, &c., before venturing within their reach. We accordingly, for three hours, wound our way in silence among fallen timber and thickset cotton-wood; climbed every neighbouring height, and examined the depressions in the plain, which could not be seen from the lower hills.

Having searched the valley thoroughly in this manner, and, perceiving from the peaceable and careless bearing of the small bands of buffalo around its borders, that if there were Indians within it they were at some distance from our trail, we descended from the heights, and struck through a deep ravine across it, to the junction of the northern and southern waters of the stream.

We found the river at this place a hundred and fifty yards wide, and of an average depth of about six feet, with a current of five miles the hour. Its course hence is E. N. E. about one hundred miles, where it rushes through a magnificent kenyon128 or chasm in the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains to the plains of the Great Prairie Wilderness. This valley is a congeries or collection of valleys. That is, along the banks of the main and tributary streams a vale extends a few rods or miles, nearly or quite separated from a similar one beyond, by a rocky ridge or bute or a rounded hill covered with grass or timber, which protrudes from the height towards the stream. This is a bird's-eye view of Boyou Salade, so named from the circumstance that native rock salt is found in some parts of it. We were in the central portion of it. To the north, and south, and west, its isolated plains rise one above the other, always beautiful, and covered with verdure during the months of spring and summer. But when the storms of autumn and winter come, they are the receptacles of vast bodies of snow, which fall or are drifted there from the Anahuac Ridge, on its western horizon. A sweet spot this, for the romance of the future as well as the present and past. The buffalo have for ages resorted here about the last days of July, from the arid plains of the Arkansas and the Platte; and thither the Eutaws and Cheyennes from the mountains around the Santa Fé, and the Shoshonies or Snakes and Arrapahoes from the west, and the Blackfeet, Crows and Sioux from the north, have for ages met, and hunted, and fought, and loved. And when their battles and hunts were interrupted by the chills and snows of November, they have separated for their several winter resorts. How wild and beautiful the past as it comes up fledged with the plumage of the imagination!

These vales, studded with a thousand villages of conical skin wigwams, with their thousands of fires blazing on the starry brow of night! I see the dusky forms crouching around the glowing piles of ignited logs, in family groups whispering the dreams of their rude love; or gathered around the stalwart form of some noble chief at the hour of midnight, listening to the harangue of vengeance or the whoop of war, that is to cast the deadly arrow with the first gleam of morning light. Or may we not see them gathered, a circle of braves around an aged tree, surrounded each by the musty trophies of half a century's daring deeds. The eldest and richest in scalps, rises from the centre of the ring and advances to the tree. Hear him:

"Fifty winters ago, when the seventh moon's first horn hung over the green forests of the Eutaw hills, myself and five others erected a lodge for the Great Spirit, on the snows of the White Bute, and carried there our wampum and skins and the hide of a white buffalo. We hung them in the Great Spirit's lodge, and seated ourselves in silence till the moon had descended the western mountain, and thought of the blood of our fathers that the Cumanches had killed when the moon was round and lay on the eastern plain. My own father was scalped, and the fathers of five others were scalped, and their bloody heads were gnawed by the wolf. We could not live while our fathers' lodges were empty, and the scalps of their murderers were not in the lodges of our mothers. Our hearts told us to make these offerings to the Great Spirit who had fostered them on the mountains; and when the moon was down, and the shadows of the White Bute were as dark as the hair of a bear, we said to the Great Spirit, 'No man can war with the arrows from the quiver of thy storms; no man's word can be heard when thy voice is among the clouds; no man's hand is strong when thy hand lets loose its winds. The wolf gnawed the heads of our fathers, and the scalps of their murderers hang not in the lodges of our mothers. Great father spirit, send not thine anger out; hold in thy hand the winds; let not thy great voice drown the death-yell while we hunt the murderers of our fathers.' I and the five others then built in the middle of the lodge a fire, and in its bright light the Great Spirit saw the wampum, and the skin, and the white buffalo hide. Five days and nights, I and the five others danced and smoked the medicine, and beat the board with sticks, and chanted away the power of the great Medicine, that they might not be evil to us, and bring sickness into our bones. Then when the stars were shining in the clear sky, we swore (I must not tell what, for it was in the ear of the Great Spirit) and went out of the lodge with our bosoms full of anger against the murderers of our fathers, whose bones were in the jaws of the wolf, and went for their scalps to hang them in the lodges of our mothers. See him strike the aged tree with his war club again, again, nine times. So many Cumanches did I slay, the murderers of my father, before the moon was round again, and lay upon the eastern plain."

This is not merely an imagined scene in former times in Boyou Salade. All the essential incidents related, happened yearly in that and other hunting grounds, whenever the old braves assembled to celebrate the valorous deeds of their younger days. When these exciting relations were finished, the young men of the tribe, who had not yet distinguished themselves, were exhorted to seek glory in a similar way. Woe to him who passed his manhood without ornamenting the door of his lodge with the scalps of his enemies!

This valley is still frequented by some of these tribes as a summer haunt, when the heat of the plains renders them uncomfortable. The Eutaws were scouring it when we passed. We therefore crossed the river to its northern bank, and followed up its northern branch eight miles,129 with every eye keenly searching for the appearance of foes; and made our encampment for the night in a deep chasm, overhung by the long branches of a grove of white pines. We built our fire in the dry bed of a mountain torrent, shaded by bushes on the side towards the valley, and above, by a dense mass of boughs, so effectually, as not only to conceal the blaze from any one in the valley, but also to prevent the reflection from gilding too high the conspicuous foliage of the neighbouring trees. After our horses had fed themselves, we tied them close to our couches, that they might not, in case of an attack, be driven away before we had an opportunity of defending them; and when we retired, threw water upon our fire that it might not guide the Indians in a search for us; put new caps upon our arms, and trusting to our dog and mule, the latter in such cases always the most skilful to scent their approach, tried to sleep. But we were too near the snows. Chilling winds sucked down the vale, and drove us from our blankets to a shivering watch during the remainder of the night. Not a cap, however, was burst. Alas! for our brave intentions, they ended in an ague fit.

Our guide informed us, that the Eutaws reside on both sides of the Eutaw or Anahuac mountains; that they are continually migrating from one side to the other; that they speak the Spanish language; that some few half breeds have embraced the Catholic faith; that the remainder yet hold the simple and sublime faith of their forefathers, in the existence of one great creating and sustaining cause, mingled with a belief in the ghostly visitations of their deceased Medicine men or diviners; and that they number a thousand families. He also stated that the Cheyennes are a band of renegadoes from the Eutaws and Cumanches; and that they are less brave and more thievish than any other tribe living in the plains south of Arkansas.130

We started at seven o'clock in the morning of the 24th, travelled eight miles in a north by west direction, killed another buffalo, and went into camp to jerk the meat. Again we were among the frosts and snows and storms of another dividing ridge. Our camp was on the height of land between the waters of the Platte and those of Grand River, the largest southern branch of the Colorado of the west.131

From this eminence we had a fine view of Boyou Salade, and also of the Anahuac range, which we had before seen from the ridge between the Arkansas and the southern waters of the Platte. To the south-east, one hundred and sixty miles, towered the bald head of James' Peak; to the east, one hundred miles distant, were the broken and frowning cliffs through which the south fork of the Platte, after having gathered all its mountain tributaries, forces its roaring cascade course to the plains. To the north, the low, timbered and grassy hills, some tipped with snow, and others crowned with lofty pines, faded into a smooth, dim, and regular horizon.

CHAPTER V

An Ascent – A Misfortune – A Death – The Mountain of the Holy Cross – Leaping Pines – Killing a Buffalo – Asses and Tyrants – Panther, &c. – Geography – Something about descending the Colorado of the West – Dividing Ridges – A Scene – Tumbleton's Park – A War Whoop – Meeting of Old Fellow Trappers – A Notable Tramp – My Mare – The etiquette of the Mountains – Kelly's Old Camp, &c. – A Great Heart – Little Bear River – Vegetables and Bitterness – Two White Men, a Squaw and Child – A Dead Shot – What is Tasteful – Trapping – Blackfoot and Sioux – A Bloody Incident – A Cave – Hot Spring – The Country – A Surprise – American and Canadian Trappers – The Grand River – Old Park – Death before us – The Mule – Despair.

The ascent to this height was not so laborious as the one near the Arkansas. It lay up the face of a mountain which formed a larger angle with the plane of the horizon than did the other. But it was clothed with a dense forest of pines, a species of double-leaved hemlock, and spruce and fir trees, which prevented our animals from falling over the precipices, and enabled us to make long sweeps in a zigzag course, that much relieved the fatigue of the ascent. We however met here a misfortune of a more serious nature to us, than the storm that pelted us on the other ridge. One of the horses belonging to our guide sickened just before arriving at the summit, and refusing to bear farther the burthen which he had heretofore borne with ease and apparent pride, sunk under it. We roused him; he rose upon his legs, and made a willing attempt to do his duty; but the poor animal failed in his generous effort.

We, therefore, took off his pack, put it upon my saddle horse, and drove him before us to the summit, from whence we enjoyed the beautiful prospect we have just described. But we felt little interest in the expanse of sublimity before us; our eyes and sympathies, too, were turned to the noble animal which was now suffering great pain. He had been reared in the mountains; and it seemed to be his highest pleasure to tread along their giddy brinks. Every morning at his post, with the other horse belonging to his master, he would stand without being fastened, and receive his burthen; and with every demonstration of willingness, bear it over the mountains and through torrents till his task was ended in the night encampment. Such a horse, in the desolate regions we were traversing, the bearer of our wearing apparel and food, the leader of our band of animals, the property of our kind old Kentuckian, the one-third of all his worldly estate, was no mean object of interest. After noticing him awhile, we perceived symptoms of his being poisoned, administered whatever medicine we possessed suited to the case, and left him to his fate for the night. Rain during the day, frost during the night; ice in our camp kettles an inch in thickness.

We were out early on the morning of the 25th, and found our guide's horse living. We accordingly saddled, packed and started down the valley of a small head stream of Grand River.132 The sick horse was driven slowly along for about five miles when he refused to go farther. It now became evident that he had been eating the wild parsnips at our last encampment on the other side of the ridge. That he must die became, therefore, certain, and we unpacked to see the breath from his body before he should be left to the merciless wolves. He died near daylight down, and as the path before us was rough and bushy, we determined to remain on the spot for the night. Our anxiety for the life of this excellent animal had well nigh led us to pass unobserved one of the most singular curiosities in nature – a cross of crystallized quartz in the eastern face of a conical mountain!